Stifle That Belch
Ben Owens threw
down his school bag on his unmade bed and opened his laptop.
It may be a new school year at Oak Wood, but it was back to the same routine for Ben: continue to avoid being noticed, school bus, home, let yourself in because mom won’t be home until eight, check the cat’s food, ignore the instructions for dinner, grab a bag of chips and a soda, head up to your bedroom.
At some point, after some Internet time and maybe an hour on Dragonsblade, homework would happen.
His older sister would be at cheerleading practice and then, no doubt, hanging out with her thousands of friends until late, so Ben would have the house to himself for the next few hours. Sometimes he wished he could play a sport, which accounted for much of his sister’s social life. Even his mom had used the new school year as an opportunity to encourage him to join some sports at school. Ben had considered it for all of twenty seconds and then given her his now-commonplace sullen response and a shrug. Deep down, he was frustrated that the rest of his family’s gift for team games had completely eluded him.
He couldn’t wait to learn how to drive, to get some freedom. A car would prove a welcome break from the school bus, which he had outgrown a few years back. He foresaw endless fights with his sister over car sharing, but only another year and she’d be at college. Ben allowed himself a moment of relief at that particular thought.
He typed in his password, and
AmesAndNix.com
flashed up on the screen. He sighed; his sister must have sneaked in and set it as his home page again. For a cheerleader, she was pretty smart. She also teased him relentlessly about his apparent crush on Nicole, which, naturally, he always vehemently denied.
Although there were no new videos on the website, Ben’s attention was drawn to the number 205 farther down the page. It reminded him of that saying about how no publicity is bad publicity. Or was it, “All publicity is good publicity”? “No such thing as bad publicity”?
Whatever.
AmesAndNix.com
’s following had seriously increased, and there were already dozens of unanswered posts. The wildfire headlines had drawn more people to their website, although Ben wasn’t certain whether that was a good thing.
He scanned down the Web page and saw that one of the posts linked to a news item titled “Lake Fairfax Wildfire.” Taking a mouthful of soda, Ben clicked on it out of mild curiosity.
The website of WBN, a local news station, loaded, and it showed a list of several new reports related to the Lake Fairfax wildfire. The most recent link, titled “Strange Animal Deaths,” took Ben to a broadcast streamed earlier in the day from Lake Fairfax, just a few miles from Ben’s house.
Ben took out his notebook and pressed Play.
A shot of the charred and flattened path of the wildfire came up first, against a wider backdrop of Lake Fairfax. The view then panned across to a young, well-dressed reporter with a glossy mane of dark hair. Her name was Lynn Meyers, and judging by her dress and heels, she had quite possibly never visited campgrounds before.
“We’re here live at Lake Fairfax in Reston, a suburb of Washington, D.C., which was the site of a raging wildfire this weekend.” Lynn starts walking and the camera follows her. In the background, police officers — some in plain clothes— and scientists in masks scurry about. A burly old cop sips heavily from a coffee cup and appears have a very short conversation with an FBI agent, ending it by walking away.
“As you can see behind me, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are conducting a thorough investigation into the circumstances around the Lake Fairfax wildfire after it was revealed that Senator Campbell Jennings and his family were spending the weekend here at the time of the blaze. Although the White House has not released further comment, WBN understands that federal investigators are pursuing several leads and have not ruled out the possibility that it was an act of terrorism.”
Ben paused the video and sat back, astonished. Terrorism? Reston was certainly close enough to D.C. to be considered a target, and yet he thought that was a moronic theory. He munched a handful of chips on that thought. The high-ranking senator and his family could be a legitimate target. Senator Jennings was head of some major Senate committee, maybe House Ways and Means? Foreign Relations? It was hard not to like the senator’s son, Drake, as he was actually kind of modest despite his family’s power and wealth. Drake was careful never to name-drop his influential father, but the crew he ran with was usually happy to do that for him. Ben clicked on Play again.
Lynn continued walking into the charred part of the forest. “Investigators say it could take up to a week to determine the cause of the blaze, and then comes the painstaking process of sifting through the debris …” Ben was beginning to zone out of the usual news reporter spiel and wondered what this had to do with animal deaths. Just as he was about to close the video and click over to his Facebook page, Lynn pressed her finger up to her earpiece. She was receiving some new information, and her calm, professional manner was wavering.
Facebook could wait.
“Hold on. I’m just receiving … OK. Thanks. We’ve found something extraordinary to show you.”
Ben chugged his soda, so enthralled that he had to stifle a belch.
The camera following Lynn jumped around now as it tailed the running reporter. The blurry view veered jaggedly from tree green to sky blue to earth brown and back again, until it came to a standstill and the camera fell on a breathless yet immaculate Lynn.
Behind her, an amazed crewmember was staring at the ground below, recording something on his smartphone, and Lynn was still holding her earpiece, receiving new directions. She turned to the camera, suddenly energized by this new development.
“We have found something unexpected at the site of the Lake Fairfax wildfire.”
The camera panned down to show an animal carcass.
Ben gave a snort.
A dead animal from a wildfire? Is that it?
“… Our producer has just captured photos of this and six other animal carcasses farther up the campgrounds here.”
The view cut to shaky smartphone images showing the charred remains of animals of various sizes: a deer, a raccoon, a squirrel and a few other animals that were difficult to identify.
Ben enlarged the video screen on his laptop.
“My producer is just verifying …” Another pause, this time full of excitement and suspense. “And yes, we can confirm. My producer has just mapped the coordinates of his photos, and the GPS positioning of the carcasses form an exact line. We can now go to our news chopper in the skies of Reston above Lake Fairfax to see if we can get an aerial view of this strange animal formation.”
The video cut to a hovering view, buzzing with the sound of helicopter blades. The pilot points down toward the ground at Lake Fairfax and shouts inaudibly over the noise of the blades for the audience’s attention. The camera zooms in.
Sure enough, down below, in a blackened and burnt patch of forest razed to the ground by the fire, several animal carcasses of various shapes and sizes could be seen arranged in a neat line and at equidistant lengths, stretching across the campgrounds through the forest and out to the clearing.
Several investigators and men in suits could now be seen converging on the television crew to see what they were seeing, and it was obvious they were very interested in what the crew had discovered.
Moments later, the investigators gave the hand signal to cut off the newscast, and Lynn complied by wrapping up her coverage.
When the clip was over, Ben took a few more notes and went downstairs to stock up on more soda and chips.
God, I love government coverups. What has them so spooked?
It’s the Feds
Floodlights, shining as
glaringly bright as a
sports stadium, lit the scorched earth of the woods surrounding Lake Fairfax. Despite the dark blue backdrop of evening and the new moon, it was still a working day for the twenty or so FBI investigators as they sifted for clues in the burnt ground within the cordoned-off area.
Officer Gillespie sipped his cocoa and leaned against his car, waiting. He’d received word from Division that two more FBI investigators had arrived at the scene expecting to talk to him, and they sure seemed to be taking their time. It would be another night babysitting the federal agents, he thought. He could see them from here, kneeling down, prodding at the animal carcasses and in close conversation.
These ones were special agents, though Gillespie wasn’t sure what marked them as “
special
,” as in his experience, most FBI agents seemed to regard themselves as special. There were exceptions, naturally, like with every rule out there, and despite his years of service dealing with the bad and the worse, the officer was always willing to be proved wrong.
The connection to Senator Jennings had brought the agents there faster and with more intensity than Gillespie had expected, but to his knowledge, nothing odd had cropped up yet. Sure, the arrangement of animal carcasses in a neat little line was a bit weird, but who knew what could’ve caused that? There was a fire, after all. And the obvious cause may just be the correct one. There was very little in the world that surprised Gillespie anymore, bad or good.
The taller of the two agents, an amiable, fair-haired man named Agent Carter, approached Gillespie. His stern-looking, balding and bearded partner was apparently more interested in sniffing at the dead squirrel on the ground.
“Officer.” Carter handed Gillespie his business card and they shook hands.
J. B. Carter
FBI Special Agent
P.R.E.S.S. Division
Carter squared himself in front of the officer and prepared to take notes. “What do you make of all this?”
Gillespie knew this question was coming. “Was hoping your people’d be able to tell me that.”
Carter chuckled. “Agent Bishop and I were remarking on the formation over there.”
“Uh-huh. Sure is odd. But like I told your colleagues, it could be anything.”
“Well, we’re thinking a little more precisely than that. There have been some poisonings in Maryland by a known terrorist group that likes to leave a mark where they’ve been. These animals look a lot like it.”
“Terrorist poisonings, huh? Same kind of animal?”
Carter paused and regarded the old cop with a good deal of respect; the investigators in Maryland hadn’t just assumed the animals had been burned to death either.
“Larger, mainly.”
“Livestock?”
“Some. Not all food sources, if that’s what you’re thinking. You were first on the scene here, right?”
Gillespie nodded and finished his cocoa, crushing up the cup.
“Anyone strike you as suspicious? Someone who maybe stood out?”
Gillespie thought about it. “Not in that kinda way. We had some fearful people, some brave people, kids and animals. Just the usual kind of folks using the camping grounds.”
Carter nodded and flipped pages in his notepad to reveal a list of questions.
“Can you provide us with a list of people involved in the fire?”
“Sure, we can get that from the triage unit and the campground registry. Nobody should’ve been in the park after dark unless they were camping.”
Agent Carter glanced over at his partner, who was over by the burnt remains of the pine trees.
Agent Bishop took another snapshot of a dead squirrel and then scrolled through the pictures he’d accumulated, first of the Lake Fairfax animals, and then others from Maryland — a deer, a fox, a groundhog. All carcasses. All neatly arranged in a line.
Odd.
Bishop tucked his smartphone in his pocket and glanced across at the Federal Evidence Response team. Bishop’s group was regarded with some suspicion around the rank and file, and there was always a sense that they were muscling in on others’ territory. One of these days, somebody would actually welcome them across the yellow incident tape. Part of him wanted to linger around a little longer to really put the scare on his fellow fed colleagues, but he and his partner had to be in Maryland again by sunrise. He introduced himself to Officer Gillespie and handed him his card.
H. Bishop
FBI Special Agent
P.R.E.S.S. Division
Gillespie flipped the card around as he examined the backside for anything else of interest. “So what is this P.R.E.S.S. Divison about anyways?”
“We’re with the Paranormal Research, Enforcement, and Survellience Service. It’s a branch of the FBI’s special investigative group.” Bishop rapidly stated in an irritated tone of jumbled words.
The officer lifted his hat slightly to scratch his temple. “Paranormal? Isn’t that for Aliens and stuff?”
“Paranormal is for anything out of the ordinary.” Bishop said matter-of-factly then pointed to the phone number on the card. “We can be reached at that number 24/7. Anything new — or something that simply strikes you as strange — give us a call.”
“Uh-huh…and…Not them?” Gillespie signaled to the Federal Team now clearing up.
“Us first.”
With a wry smile, Bishop gestured to his partner for them to leave.
As they returned to their Suburban, parked just outside of the eerie glow of the floodlights, Bishop registered the hastily concealed relief that now rippled across the faces of the remaining FBI team. Lake Fairfax had too many cooks in the kitchen.
Carter was looking as perplexed as he felt, and Bishop wondered what a day would be like when a question led to an answer — not to more questions.
IamA Real-Life Hero, AMA
A
close-up of
pink fuzziness and freckles with two pairs of blinking eyes is pushed aside by a horse’s nose, and then Nicole, Amy and Bob jump back from their extreme close-up.
“Hey, y’all! Welcome to our first ever AMA Session!” Amy offers a mini-salute, and so does Bob.
“Hi! – that’s Ask Me Anything in case you didn’t know.” Nicole gives a little wave.
They’re sitting side by side on two big, bright, polka-dot beanbag chairs. Behind them, Amy’s hurriedly tidied and loudly painted bedroom, filled with posters and books, with an old-fashioned French dressing table overrun with nail polish, cosmetics packages, makeup brushes and jewelry.
“So, we’ve been getting loads of posts from you guys asking about our Lake Fairfax experience.” Nicole waves a pile of printouts.
“First off, it was, like, awesome.” Amy leans forward so that her hair half obscures Nicole’s face. “I mean, we didn’t know if we were going to live or what. The noise was … it was like this low rumble, all the time, and then suddenly there’d be this crackling and BOOM!” Amy throws her arms wide open. “The fire would take down a tree! We couldn’t see, the smoke was, like … It was like something clutching at my throat. And then there was Elise.” She holds her hand up to her chest, clearly moved by the recollection.
Nicole leans forward — now unobscured by Amy’s hair — and turns to the printouts.
“OK! So, our first question asks: ‘Ames and Nix, were you scared?’”
Amy looks shocked. “Well, yeah! I mean, we woke up in the middle of the night to a smoke-filled tent. We couldn’t see anything. Outside it was dark, and the smoke — it totally choked us. We had to wet these scarves so we could breathe. Everyone basically ran past us!”
“Which is understandable given that most people we saw were afraid,” interrupts Nicole. “You don’t know how you’re going to react until you’re in the moment. Next?”
Amy’s turn to read. Her gaze flickers over the first printout. She chucks it aside. Then another. Nicole rolls her eyes at the screen.
“I saw that, Nix. Some of these are kinda R-Rated. OK — oh, this is a good one. ‘Did you see anyone on fire?’”
Nicole turns to Amy, disgusted, and snatches the page away. “As a matter of fact,” Nicole chides, “everyone came out from the woods basically unharmed. We saw a lot of trees burn and we helped a girl who was hurt, and some clothes were kind of singed.”
“Yeah, but I got burnt on my leg. See!” Using Nicole as a prop, Amy hitches up her skirt to her thigh and shows the redness on the back of her calf and knee. “We didn’t notice it at the time cuz we were running so fast to escape, but we were incredibly close to the wildfire. We were here!” Amy points the camera down to a mocked-up map of the campgrounds. Their tent is marked in purple, a blue splotch designating the lake and a big patch of green for the forest. “And the fire started out here.” She brings into view a gold foil flame and begins to move it menacingly around, close to the tent. “Next question!”
“‘How long did it take you to escape?’”
“We’d say about a half-hour. But it felt like a day.”
Amy takes center stage again and gesticulates each turn of events wildly. “And I got so sick from the smoke. The second we got to the clearing, it was like BAM! It hit us then. People were running everywhere. Stuff was all over the place. This car, it, like — it zoomed past. It was like this.” Amy squeezes her forefinger and thumb together to show how little space there was. “An inch further and I’d’ve been toast. So after that we asked around a bit and worked out we couldn’t get back to our car and our best bet would be to run. We went back into the forest. That’s when I got real sick.”
“Ames inhaled a lot of smoke when she asked that guy for help,” Nicole explains. “So we didn’t get very far into the forest before she had to rest. Then we found Elise with her dog, Charlie, and she looked pretty bad, so we decided to carry her out.”
“Anyway, so Nix carried Elise to the clearing by way of a ditch and a knee-deep stream, but that is totally another story. Then the firemen found us. We’re alive! End of story. Phew!” Amy, out of breath, takes a sip of water.
Nicole smiles and picks out another question. “‘You guys are like superheroes. So if you could have any superpower, what would you choose?’”
“Excellent question … Super-smasher,” Amy responds, almost immediately, and leaps to her feet. “Like The Hulk, but I wouldn’t be all huge and rock-like, I’d just be me-size like I am now, but also have the power to super-smash anything I wanted. So, for instance, I could either save someone from a devastating train wreck, or … I could go and, I dunno, smash … things up.”
“What kind of things?”
“Everything!” Amy noisily mimics the action of punching a big thing and the fallout of debris that comes crashing down.
Nicole waits until Amy’s finished, then: “Have you truly thought this through? Because I would say that smashing things up means actually damaging stuff … which kind of goes against being a superhero. Also, remember that Hulk ends up naked whenever he goes back to being Bruce Banner.”
“Oh yeah, forgot about that part … Nicole, you tell us all what you’d pick.”
“Why not something like super-genius? You could use that to solve massive problems. Like cure disease.”
“Like, all diseases?”
“The really bad ones. The incurable.”
“OK, so — bam!” Amy snaps her fingers. “All diseases cured! No one gets disease; no one dies. So what would you do with the population boom, hm? All those people hanging around not getting ill? How would you feed everyone? You’d have to invent a different superpower.”
Nicole stares at Amy. “Nope. Super-genius pretty much handles that, too. I’ll solve the food crisis as well.”
“That’s cheating. A two-fer.”
“It’s a good catch-all. You can cure disease, end starvation, eliminate pollution, stop global warming. I’d be like Tony Stark from Iron Man, but a girl with a conscience. Super-genius is the super-super-skill!”
“But let’s say the drug companies get mad at you because you cured all diseases and they’re out of business. So they kidnap you and lock you up in some cage in an underground secret prison.”
“No way! I’ll escape!”
“What with? Cuz you can only have one superpower, right? You can’t unpollute and undisease your way out of a cage.”
It’s Nicole’s turn to furrow her brow. “So are we saying that you definitely need more than one superpower?”
“Absolutely.”
“Fine, then. My second is … teleportation.”
“For the cage?”
Nicole nods. “For the cage.”
“Well played, Nix. Well played. One last question. This one is from NewBenKenobi.” Amy’s glance slides across at Nicole, then back to the screen. “Hey, Ben. Good to hear from you again. So, you ask: ‘People have found evidence of animal remains in an odd formation at the campgrounds. Did you see anything weird there?’”
Nicole looks confused. “Animal remains?”
Amy stares into the camera. “Uh, Ben: Don’t know. Don’t care. You guys out there, post us the superpowers you’d like here at
AmesAndNix.com
. Tune in again! Byeeeee!”
The screen fades to purple, with scrawled letters:
Peace Out! Ames & Nix xxx